Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

We still have time to mess this up!

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

No one could have predicted…

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / You Had Six Hours to Solve This and You Still Couldn’t Do It

You Had Six Hours to Solve This and You Still Couldn’t Do It

by | 429 Comments

This post is in: 

You guys had 6 hours to solve the Climate Crisis, and you still couldn’t do it.  So maybe it’s time for a new thread.

I am the person who always has all their Christmas gifts purchased and mailed before Thanksgiving.  This year I’ve got nothing.  My gift-giving mojo is on hiatus.  So rather than continue to sit here and think about that, with no ideas forthcoming, I’m hoping for a distracting BJ thread.

Unfortunately, I’ve got nothing to start it off.

Open thread.

 

Reader Interactions

429Comments

  3. 3.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    You want laughter or outrage? Let’s go with laughing at them

    Rex ChapmanHorse racing @RexChapman · 4h
    “Stop the Steal” rally — Washington, DC:

    Mike Flynn wanted his sister to sing a song with the crowd and suggested “God Bless America”.

    Wait for it. You can’t make it up…

    oddly enough, Mike Flynn’s sister is the second time this weekend something has reminded me of Ginny Sacrimone from the Sopranos. I can’t remember what the first thing was.

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    The Wall Street Journal insists Jill Biden knock it off with the “doctor” nonsense and call us if you ever deliver a baby. Do you think I am kidding?

    Several public figures and others on Twitter are condemning The Wall Street Journal for an op-ed published Friday that suggested incoming first lady Jill Biden should “drop the ‘Dr.’” before her name, with some saying the piece was “trash” and “misogynistic.”

    The op-ed, written by essayist and short-story writer Joseph Epstein, argues that “‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic” and opens by addressing President-elect Joe Biden’s wife as “Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo.”

    “Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title ‘Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs,’” Epstein writes. “A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child.”

    “Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc,” the writer adds.

    By Saturday afternoon, “Joseph Epstein” and “Dr. Biden” were the No. 1 and No. 3 top trending topics on Twitter in the U.S.

    In the opinion piece, Epstein, who currently serves as an emeritus lecturer of English at Northwestern University, noted that he “taught at Northwestern University for 30 years without a doctorate or any advanced degree.”

    “The Ph.D. may once have held prestige, but that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally, at any rate outside the sciences,” Epstein argues.

    “As for your Ed.D., Madame First Lady, hard-earned though it may have been, please consider stowing it, at least in public, at least for now,” Epstein concludes. “Forget the small thrill of being Dr. Jill, and settle for the larger thrill of living for the next four years in the best public housing in the world as First Lady Jill Biden.”

    Several people, from medical doctors and Ph.D. holders to political figures, took to Twitter to criticize Epstein’s argument.

    Chasten Buttigieg, husband of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, tweeted Saturday, “The author could’ve used fewer words to just say ‘ya know in my day we didn’t have to respect women.’”

    I hope they’re fucking proud of themselves in this defining moment.

  6. 6.

    zhena gogolia

    I have no excitement about or interest in Christmas. I sent a bunch of people the usual Harry & David packages, but I told my husband we should not exchange gifts this year. Covid makes me compulsively buy myself whatever I want online and I don’t need any more things. I usually have our friend over for Christmas dinner, but he’s being extremely careful, as we are, and I don’t want to risk it. Being together unmasked indoors just doesn’t seem worth the risk.
    Plus Drumpf and his cult really have me down. I thought they would have given up by now.

  7. 7.

    Nicole

    I got nothin’, either. I went for a run this afternoon, but I didn’t like it.

    Very sad to see the news about Charley Pride.

  8. 8.

    Juice Box

    The spouse guessed what was in one arriving box. Who speculates about boxes that arrive at Christmas? It was very inconsiderate. He got it right, too.

  9. 9.

    realbtl

    I’m frankly surprised the RW fever swamp hasn’t noticed the appearance of the Utah monolith just before the election and disappearance just after.  C’mon sheeple open your eyes.

  10. 10.

    Percysowner

    Boy, I’m with you on Christmas gifts, I have zero ideas for my kids. They are adults and I’ve given them every type of subscription (wine, beer, coffee) so those are out. I was going to give them a house cleaning once a month, but with COVID no one wants unrelated people in the house. I’m stumped. My next move it to ask them what they want and go from there.

    Sadly, Christmas and December in general have always been AWFUL for me, as in at least 6 bad, bad things have happened within 2 weeks of Christmas, so I’m not a happy camper this time of year at the best of times. I usually take pleasure in giving really good presents and this year, I’m just out of ideas.

  11. 11.

    mrmoshpotato

    You guys had 6 hours to solve the Climate Crisis, and you still couldn’t do it.

    There is no shame emoji so this one will have to do – ?

    In other news, Hey outside! Stop it with your 35 degrees and raining!

  12. 12.

    Steeplejack

    Promoted from downstairs as perhaps fitting better here.

    I think everyone could use a lighthearted/happy story right now so here goes:

    At the beginning of the pandemic I went through some painful personal stuff and would often go out at night for long walks because no one was around and I couldn’t sleep anyway. One night I was walking …

    — kelly victoria ? (@saysthefox) December 12, 2020

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @trollhattan:

    . “A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child.”

     

    A wise woman responded, “LOL fuck off loser.”

  17. 17.

    West of the Rockies

    @Nicole:

    My Mom had some of his albums in the 60s/70s (along with Jerry Vale, Ed Ames, Engelbert Humperdinck, Vickie Carr…)  Candidly, I thought he had passed years ago.

  18. 18.

    Barbara

    I have no idea whether I am doing this right, but I had chills as I watched this speech.  Gabriela Cerruti is on fire.  “The world is unfair, that’s true, but our uterus can’t fix that.”

    Ongoing right now in Argentina is the Senate debate leading up to the vote to broadly legalize abortion.  The house has already passed the measure and it has the support of the president.

    Sorry, can’t get it to work.  You can try searching for Brut America/Gabriela Cerruti.  It’s worth watching.

  19. 19.

    mrmoshpotato

    @zhena gogolia:

    Plus Drumpf and his cult really have me down. I thought they would have given up by now. 

    Oh, they won’t.  They need to be electorally pounded into dust.

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @trollhattan: the “kiddo” is just the chef’s kiss of douchebaggery. The same guy called Obama the first “affirmative action president”, saying Hillary Clinton would be our second. This was published in the now-defunct, allegedly oh-so-repsectable Weekly Standard, next time you see Bill Kristol or David French wondering how we got here and what has become of the Republican Party, etc. Per his recently updated Wiki page, he was pushed out of prestigious job because of an unhinged rant about homosexuality. I fully expect the Northwestern English Dept, if not someone hire up, to officialize his heave-ho by lunchtime monday.

  26. 26.

    Redshift

    Dang! I came up with a solution for the climate crisis, but it didn’t fit on this cocktail napkin it was too late for the dead thread.

  27. 27.

    The Dangerman

    @zhena gogolia: “…given up by now.”

    True believers in the cult. Doesn’t matter if it’s shit, Trump said it, they believe it, on it goes.

    Trump is making bank so he’s not gonna stop. Ever.

    Seeing Flynn makes me wonder the mechanics of limited Martial Law. Isn’t that like being a little bit pregnant?

    Trump will do everything possible to be an asshole all the way out to 1/20. Again, he’s making bank on stop the steal. After 1/20 they will have to come up with a new slogan (although they recycled MAGA for 2020 so who knows).

  28. 28.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    next time you see Bill Kristol or David French wondering how we got here and what has become of the Republican Party, etc. 

    Ask them about the GOP over the past 40+ years and watch as they insist that the GOP was respectable before Dump oozed down the escalator in 2015.

  29. 29.

    Redshift

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    The same guy called Obama the first “affirmative action president”, saying Hillary Clinton would be our second. 

    Weird how white guys who display no particular qualification for their position are always sure everyone else must have gotten special treatment…

  30. 30.

    J R in WV

    Well, we got no kids, so have never had that to work towards at Xmas. My dad ran a community toy fund drive for kids on welfare, got names from the Human Services dept, Salvation Army, food bank, etc. He hit up toy wholesale vendors in mid summer, raised money, got local groups to volunteer, provided a bag of nuts and fruit, small toys, a big toy (mostly bikes) for families, got the HS chorus to sing carols, and threw a party for 3000 odd kids.

    Some families the parents came, if their kids still believed in Santa, but mostly they came with the kids, who picked presents off huge racks filled with toys. There was a tree that the phone company used a bucket truck to erect. I was into it for years.

    This year, I ordered Wife a new laptop, and myself a small Sony stereo, because our tiny Denon, while it still plays music, has no remote, and so most functions no longer are supported. Youngster dog ate one, I ordered the last one on Earth, and he ate that one too. The laptop arrived a half hour before I got the email telling me that it was shipped, via UPS. The little stereo came pretty fast too, but of course Xmas delivery season is just starting…

  32. 32.

    Nicole

    @West of the Rockies: He was 86, so he’d beaten the actuarial tables, but it was Covid, and he last performed a month ago at the CMAs, so people are speculating if that’s where he contracted it.  I watched a video clip of him performing there, and no masks anywhere. :(

  33. 33.

    dmsilev

    My family isn’t big on gift giving. That helps; there’s not much pressure. I was at the farmer’s market this morning and one of the vendors was selling nicely wrapped trays of spiced chocolates. So, that’s a couple of gifts sorted; they’ll go in the mail on Monday. My niece and nephew got new bicycles; that was an expensive enough gift that it was a group effort.

  34. 34.

    Aleta

    Re:@germy:

    Everybody knew he hunted men
    But didn’t care for mice.
    He picked on the very poor
    That no new garments got for Yule
    Who toiled and lived in dire need.

    From them he took in one fell swoop
    Their whole Yule dinner
    Always eating it himself
    If he possibly could.

    Hence it was that the women
    At their spinning wheels sat
    Spinning a colorful thread
    For a frock or a little sock.
    Because you mustn’t let the Yule Cat
    Get hold of the little children.

    They had to get something new to wear
    From the grownups each year.
    And when the lights came on, on Yule Eve
    And the Cat peered in,
    The little children stood rosy and proud
    All dressed up in their new clothes.

    Some had gotten an apron
    And some had gotten shoes
    Or something that was needed
    – That was all it took.

    For all who got something new to wear
    Stayed out of the Yule Cat’s grasp
    He then gave an awful hiss
    But went on his way.

    Whether he still exists I do not know.
    But his visit would be in vain
    If next time everybody
    Got something new to wear.

    Now you might be thinking of helping
    Where help is needed most.
    Perhaps you’ll find some children
    That have nothing at all.

    Perhaps searching for those
    That live in a lightless world
    Will give you a happy day
    And a Merry, Merry Yule.

    -Jóhannes úr Kötlum

  37. 37.

    Redshift

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ah, that takes me back to an incident at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. We were on the light rail train heading back to our relatives’ house where we were staying, and a group of drunk ‘Muricans decided they had to show all those furriners on the train how patriotic they were, so they started singing songs. (Ms. Redshift and I were mortified and pretended to be Canadian.)

    “Proud to be an American,” of course, and others less offensive. They tried four or five, and every one of them trailed off into mumbling after the first couple of lines because none of them knew the words.

  38. 38.

    dmsilev

    @trollhattan: That was an absolutely horrible piece. I think my favorite part was the academic-snobbery putdown of community colleges, but really, there was something for everyone to hate. Sexism, snobbery, terrible writing, nostalgia for a non-existent past in which everything was better, etc.

  40. 40.

    sab

    I have said before I have a secret crush on Chasten Buttigieg.

    Christmas we are not overdoing it. I am giving the stepkids some cool cooking things I have discovered this year, like those grids that alllow you to oven bake “fried potatoes” that taste real. The step kids mostly don’t cook ( except one’s financee who can do absolutely anything domestic.)

    I might make cookies for everyone. And popcorn strings for the sqirrels and birds. I already got the sqirrels a decoy german sheperd silhouette that is supposed to scare hawks away.

  41. 41.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @trollhattan:

    This saddens me enormously. Joseph Epstein used to be among my favourite essayists. Somewhere (in storage at the moment) I own several collections of his essays — none of them political, as I recall, and I also don’t remember the mean-spiritedness displayed in this WSJ piece. (Tart? Yes, often.)

    I was thinking about him just a few days ago, looking forward to the day when I can unearth his books and reread him. I guess that dream can die, eh?

  42. 42.

    The Dangerman

    @WaterGirl: Pee on Flynn? Excellent idea. Oops, need new glasses.

    He is retired right? I don’t think you can get your rank pulled after retirement. He’s General for life I think.

  43. 43.

    Kent

    @trollhattan: The Wall Street Journal insists Jill Biden knock it off with the “doctor” nonsense and call us if you ever deliver a baby. Do you think I am kidding?

    How many babies has Dr. Fauci delivered?

  44. 44.

    WaterGirl

    @dmsilev: I always find that the best way to offer constructive criticism is to:

    • Make sure they haven’t asked for your input.
    • Talk down to them.
    • Do it in public.
    • Mock and criticize the person.
    • Attempt to shame or embarrass them.
    • Try to be cute while you’re doing it.
    • Bonus points sexism.
  48. 48.

    Redshift

    I did a bit better this year, probably because there’s nothing else to do. Usually I’m terrible at shopping, and end up scrambling when it’s too late to get things shipped on time.

    Also, I usually don’t really want anything (turning into my father, I guess.) I enjoy the act of giving and receiving gifts, but I’d enjoy it more if I didn’t end up with all this extra stuff afterward. If it was just me, I would suggest that we just have a collection of gifts that we re-wrap and give each other each year.

  53. 53.

    prostratedragon

    @trollhattan:  So, since he hasn’t got a doctorate, Dr. Jill Biden shouldn’t use hers as her title? Not that Chasten Buttigieg doesn’t ahso have a point.

    (Also I wonder how many non-PhD or months from getting PhD instructors there still are at Northwestern these days, and how old the youngest of them is.)

  54. 54.

    JoyceH

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: 

    the “kiddo” is just the chef’s kiss of douchebaggery.

    Oh, totally! Heck, it grates on my nerves when people use ‘kiddo’ referring to their own kids! To apply it to a middle-aged professor is just tacky. As for “Doctor”, Jill Biden is a college professor, and it’s been my experience that college professors who hold doctorates are addressed as doctor. None of those guys I called ‘Doctor’ when I was a student had ever delivered a baby.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    @Redshift: I LOVE getting presents, and I usually LOVE giving them even more.

    This year?  For my birthday in June my niece sent me a website and ask me to pick something I liked.  I opened the really great site, picked out some possibilities, and the promptly forgot all about it until yesterday when my fan started running hard on my laptop and I decided I needed to close some of my zillion browser windows.

    And there was the website, with a tab open for each thing I liked.

    I just cannot get in the spirit this year.

  62. 62.

    sab

    My dad was one of the rare medical doctors who always hated the title being used on him, but was perfectly happy to use it on my sister. “I just passed medical school. She wrote and successfully defended a dissertation.”

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    @trollhattan: I’m so glad I never had to suffer this asshat while I was at Northwestern. Also, fuck you, Non-Dr. Epstein – I would gladly read that dissertation, and you know why? BECAUSE SOME OF US TAUGHT ADULT ED AND WORRIED ABOUT SHIT LIKE STUDENT RETENTION. What a fucking jerk.

  69. 69.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

     

    @Percysowner: Boy, I’m with you on Christmas gifts, I have zero ideas for my kids.

    I’m bad with this too, but I’ve already decided and informed people that they’re getting gift certificates from The Strand bookstore in NYC, a New York institution that is in severe financial stress like so many bookstores and other businesses. It’s one of the places I make a pilgrimage to every time I’m in New York, and I want it to be there when I ever get back there again.

  70. 70.

    Bill Arnold

    @trollhattan:
    Joseph Epstein is gormless and non-self-aware, and appears to have no clue why women who have earned a PhD sometimes use Dr professionally. (The reason is very often sexism, especially from older males.)

  73. 73.

    Aleta

    @trollhattan: It does remind one of the fine old custom of telling women their degrees and choice of subject were not worthy of an upper level job, and that this was a well-known certainty despite the fact their theses were not considered worth reading, their propositions not worth discussing.*    I had a book of some of these women’s first-person stories.  Their ideas were sometimes stolen by the same authorities who’d driven them out of the field.  (Idea-stealing after being told their work was not worthy happened to men too.)

    *Too risky to discuss their ideas if your mind is not as sharp as theirs.

    ETA  Epstein seems to be afraid to engage her ideas.  The personal insult is easier and doesn’t risk exposing his inadequacy to engage.

  74. 74.

    Miss Bianca

    @Redshift:

    Weird how white guys who display no particular qualification for their position are always sure everyone else must have gotten special treatment…

    Man oh man, QFT…

  75. 75.

    Cermet

    I did solve it! Build safe, low waste thorium power plants that produce gega-watts of electricity for zero carbon emission; also, use said plants tocreate hydrogen (via water) for car and jet fuel. Zero carbon emissions and the planet is saved – QED.

  76. 76.

    Mary G

    I asked the WSJ what they would’ve thought of a hippy rag addressing Nancy Reagan as “kiddo” in 1983.

    I just got out of bed and got dressed at 3 pm, so that’s how I’m doing.

    Here is a long thread of the best internet medicine I know – baby animals:

    ??? EMERGENCY AWW THREAD ??? Post 1! pic.twitter.com/7dZUYeQsK3
    — Follow for Timeline Cleanse (@OregonProgress) December 12, 2020

  78. 78.

    sab

    @WaterGirl: Can’t link. Company called Cooks Innovation is one of the ones that offers it. It’s called an oven crisper sheet. Supposedly also works to reheat pizza.  I use it with an oven liner sheet on the rack below to avoid any oil drip.

    Chop the unpeeled potatoes into french fry shaped pieces. Put them in a bowl with cooking oil. Put them on the crisper sheet and bake at a high heat for 15 to 30 minutes depending how crisp you like them.

    New year’s resolution is to learn to do all that link stuff you guys do.

  80. 80.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @trollhattan: Anyone ask him how he feels about the professors in his department being called “Dr.”? And how many babies they’ve delivered?

  82. 82.

    NotMax

    Might as well repeat this from a week ago as it more or less fits the general topic.

    Hoping others will follow suit with a few suggestions, thought it might be okay to toss out a couple of holiday gift possibilities in case you’re stumped or faced with an eternally hard to shop for recipient.

    1) Very happy with this device over the 2 or so years have had it. Suction at one end, blower nozzle on the other. Not only helpful and handy for cleaning up dust and grit from the keyboard, there’s easily a half dozen other uses have found it a cool thing to have around for.

    2) When power outages or emergencies happen, there’s nothing like an alternative robust source of illumination. The X-Torch meets all the criteria (video), with the bonus of including being solar chargeable. (Amazon link.)

  83. 83.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    He was a professor at Northwestern, and editor of a small literary magazine. Can’t remember how I first stumbled across him, but I read one of his essays and liked it and bought a collection, and then another, and another….

    I certainly didn’t always agree with his opinions, but mostly he was just musing on stuff like growing older, or walking around his Evanston neighbourhood on an autumn day, or introducing freshmen to Prufrock, or something.

    Maybe the misogyny and other hatefulness was always there and I was too thick to notice. Or maybe he’s changed.

  84. 84.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Amazon Music has a curated set of 100 Christmas songs that’s pretty kickass if anyone subscribes to Amazon Music. All the classics plus some modern stuff that will make you want to run a screwdriver through your ear drums. Josh Groban’s rendition of Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire comes to mind. Probably not the best song to turn into a hymn. It even has three Charlie Brown songs!

  85. 85.

    Brachiator

    You guys had 6 hours to solve the Climate Crisis, and you still couldn’t do it.

    I had the solution right here just a minute ago. Where did it run off to?

  93. 93.

    p.a.

    Storm forecast SE New England & Cape Wed/Thu 1-2 feet snow.  4 days out subject to change of course.  Finally get to use snowshoes I bought end winter ’18.  Last winter nuttin’.

  95. 95.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    Yeah, was gonna drill down to the nitty gritty to extract the solution as well but it would necessitate burning the midnight oil, which seems inherently contradictory.

    ;)

  97. 97.

    Phylllis

    @Juice Box: My hubby, an artist, opened an envelope from Blick (major art supplier) two years ago that was clearly addressed to me and excitedly told me he was “keeping the gift card” included with the catalog for himself. Which was his present. After me saying “Merry Fucking Christmas” to him about three times, he finally caught on and did sheepishly apologize. So this year, I order a couple of things for him and have it shipped to the office. Which I now can’t return to due to being on quarantine for the next week and a half. I love it when I outsmart myself like this.

  99. 99.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

     Very happy with this device over the 2 or so years have had it. Suction at one end, blower nozzle on the other. Not only helpful and handy for cleaning up dust and grit from the keyboard, there’s easily a half dozen other uses have found it a cool thing to have around for.

    I ordered this handheld cordless vacuum thingie not to long ago and yeah, it is a useful little gadget.

  101. 101.

    mali muso

    Ugh, that horrible article mansplaining to Dr. Jill Biden just pisses me off.  As a holder of the same degree, I go back and forth between using the Dr. prefix and dropping it, but the point is, it’s MY choice.

    On the gift front, hubby and I both struggled to come up with ideas for each other on what the other would like.  Normally, I might say a gift certificate for a massage, pedicure, etc. but that’s a non-starter in COVID times.  I ended up asking for a Waterpik toothbrush/flossing gizmo.  Talk about adulting….

    If you have any BIPOC kids in your life and want to get them a doll that has kinky/coily hair that can be washed and styled, check this out!  I had one on backorder for months that just arrived and is waiting to be placed under our tree.  Can’t wait to see how it goes over with my 4 year old.

  102. 102.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I am the person who has all their Christmas gifts purchased and mailed before Thanksgiving.

    Uck.

  104. 104.

    zhena gogolia

    @trollhattan:

    This guy sounds like one of the loathsome troglodytes I fell afoul of on my professional listserv. I’m in moderation and they aren’t.

  105. 105.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Patricia Kayden: Yep, and it makes perfect sense to demand recount after recount in states that were decided for Biden by tens of thousands of votes but it was an absolute outrage when Gore requested a recount in Florida/2000 where the margin was in the hundreds.

  108. 108.

    Barbara

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I guess we’ll have to wait and see.  I know I shouldn’t try too hard to look for rational thought here, but insofar as there is any, it seems to be the bedrock belief that having elected Trump and Trump having appointed so many members of the judiciary, their failure to reverse the popular vote is a Republican betrayal.  I guess you would add the failure of various governors and secretaries of state to the mix, in refusing to invalidate ballots or recall state legislatures to retrospectively change the rules.  I still do not believe the protesters represent any kind of critical mass of Republican voters, and that is probably more true the further south you go.  People did not react like this when McCain and Romney lost.

  109. 109.

    jackmac

    I was delighted to get the email today that my Balloon Juice 2021 pet calendar is on the way! Speedy work and (hopefully) quick delivery. YAY!

  112. 112.

    RSA

    Donald Trump has just made Christmas Eve 2020 a full-day federal holiday. Well, that certainly changes my opinion of his Presidency!

  115. 115.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    My freaking sister has been dying to fly to NY from Dallas see our 78 year old parents. She had to be talked out of coming in July and again for Christmas last week. She called me last night to ask if I would pick her up at the Airport next Saturday. I was all WTF! My mom had to call her again today after listening to my dad rant and rave for 24 hours to tell her to just stay in Texas ferfuck’s sake! Grrr….

  116. 116.

    laura

    I’m in the back room wrapping gifts and in a total funk. I’m furious at spouse for some Covid ignoring conduct and need to get these gifts done and out of the way so I can fold out the couch bed for the next 5 to some odd days. Just absolutely vibrating with rage between bouts of tears.

  117. 117.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Percysowner:

    “A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child.”

    You don’t understand!  HE said it, and he knows he’s a wise man.  So wise, in fact, that every time he sees a mere woman getting respect, he has to rush over and make sure she knows how wise he is.

  118. 118.

    sab

    @WaterGirl: Right company, wrong product.  “Non-stick oven crisper sheet and grill mat.”

    I started out with the company when some one gave me a grill mat to use on my Weber grill. I discovered the oven-crisper w/ grill mat when I was searching to replace the original grill mat.

    With the grill mat you never need to clean the grill. Just bring the mat in and wash it in the sink or the dishwasher

    ETA Their photo shows it with pizza, but I use it for potatoes. It comes with instructions/recipes.

  119. 119.

    Aleta

    @Mary G:  More medicinal photos for you.  (They worked for me.)

    Dwarf Kingfisher Fledgling Photographed for the Very First Time   by Mario Alvaro Limos, in Esquire Philippines.  The fledgling is the 2nd photo from the top,  taken by Dr. Miguel David De Leon.

    (NYT in April) Dr. Miguel David De Leon — a vitreo-retinal surgeon in Mindanao, the southern island of the Philippines — worked a full morning at the medical center. When he got home, “I was exhausted,” he said.

    But he pulled it together, lugged his camera an hour uphill and clambered into his bird hide.

    Soon his prize appeared: a fledgling South Philippine dwarf kingfisher, about three weeks old. For 10 minutes the rare bird posed on a branch, showing off its pastel coloring and unusual black bill.

    “I was so, so thrilled,” said Dr. De Leon, who had chased this shot for over three years. “I felt like my chest would explode.”

    The Philippines is filled with birds that can be found only in its forests — at least 255 species are unique to the country. But very little is known about most of them, including the South Philippine dwarf kingfisher. Dr. De Leon’s photograph is the first known to be taken of a fledgling.

    His birding group, the Robert S. Kennedy Bird Conservancy, specializes in such photos. The group’s work tends to be both research- and Instagram-worthy, filling gaps in scientific knowledge while showing off the country’s biodiversity.

    Dr. De Leon started his group, which is named for the author of the region’s main bird guide, in 2017. None of its eight members are professional ornithologists — others include an artist, a military strategist and two pilots. But they are very, very patient.

    “Foreign researchers and scientists don’t stay here in the Philippines long,” Dr. De Leon said. His group instead does stakeouts: long days in bird hides, which they construct from bamboo, palm fronds and banana leaves.
    down.
    …

  120. 120.

    p.a.

    @WaterGirl: My $’s on long-time habits.  Bread and milk.  It’s like everybody has 8 year old kids at home.  Other stuff I bet not as much- live off covid stockpiles for the 2 days it takes to get plowed out.  For those with the living space to be able to stockpile.

  121. 121.

    Calouste

    @Baud: IIRC most babies were delivered by midwives, women almost exclusively without advanced degrees. And only a minority, and probably a fairly small one, of MDs have actually delivered babies. (Outside their training anyway)

  123. 123.

    burnspbesq

    holiday shopping was done in a one-hour online binge over Thanksgiving weekend. Hit all the usual suspects: Ross-Simons, Tecovas, Patagonia, Brooks.

    If you’re looking for an inexpensive gift with attitude, check out WTFNotebooks.

    For myself, I’m bidding in a charity auction to benefit musicians whose income streams have been decimated by the pandemic. Lots of folks whose names you would recognize have donated instruments to be auctioned off. I’ll know on Monday if I’m the new owner of a custom-made octave mandolin currently owned by Tim O’Brien.

    https://www.charitybuzz.com/support/NationalIndependentTalentOrganization

  126. 126.

    mali muso

    @zhena gogolia: I sure hope so!  Hair day is a pretty big deal at our house (weekly or bi-weekly depending on whether or not she’s wearing a protective style), so I think she may find it fun to do the doll’s hair while I’m working on hers. :)

  128. 128.

    Mallard Filmore

    @WaterGirl:

     

    Speaking of General Flynn, can’t he military take his rank away from him and make him a peon again?

    Whatever the military does to Flynn won’t happen until Trump is powerless to undo it. I do wonder if a Presidential Pardon can restrict any military discipline.

  129. 129.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @laura: Mrs. Fuckhead’s employer (a Covid-denier) forced all of the employees into a small room for a benefits meeting early in the pandemic so we social distanced at home for 10 days. She took the upstairs and I took the downstairs, which meant I had to do all the cooking.

  131. 131.

    sab

    @mousebumples: The Costco basket and the basket Watergirl found look like a more advanced (basket, not sheet) version of what I have. Probably tidier to work with than mine, and makes bigger quantities.

    I like mine because just the two of us, it is flat. I can always fit another 1/4 inch item in the cupboard beside my baking sheets.

  132. 132.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly: It’s my ritual.  Once the pool closes on Labor Day and I can’t do the morning swim anymore, I feel kind of sad and lost, and I channel my energy into Christmas gifts.

    But of course this year, no pool, no swimming.  No Christmas mojo.

  133. 133.

    zhena gogolia

    @laura:

    Well, until I saw JSF’s comment I thought you were folding out the bed because you were so mad at your husband you didn’t want to sleep with him. So this is a little better than that.

  135. 135.

    geg6

    I’m almost done with gifts for this year.  Getting John practical things, like long underwear, super warm socks, underwear, but also his favorite cologne and some books.  My brother, who is battling cancer (and winning so far) is getting a Visa gift card.  We always make homemade gifts for my sisters and their husbands and my oldest niece and her husband.  It’s always canned tomatoes from our garden and, usually, raspberry or blackberry jam from our bushes.  But John moved the bushes last year and they aren’t producing enough yet to make jam.  So I’m making Christmas Chex crack for everyone.  Oldest niece is also getting a Target gift card so she can pick up whatever she needs for her baby due in February.  Youngest niece is getting a $50 Starbucks card (she’s addicted…college students, what can I say?) and, in honor of her newfound interest in cooking, Ina Garten’s Modern Comfort Food cookbook.  My youngest sister and I always get each other something special because, as the two youngest of six with a big age gap between us and the older siblings, we were almost like my parents’s second family and mostly grew up after the siblings had left.  I got her some books, but need at least one more thing, not sure what.  And lastly, my niece’s 18 month old daughter.  I have no idea what to get her.  Any suggestions welcome.

  137. 137.

    WaterGirl

    @jackmac: I think Wolvesvalley said hers came on 12/10, and I can see that she ordered it on 12/4 and it shipped on 12/6.

    So that’s pretty good. I think she’s in PA, but I don’t know if that makes any difference.

  138. 138.

    Brachiator

    @Barbara:

    People did not react like this when McCain and Romney lost.

    Neither McCain nor Romney tried to start a controversy and keep it going.

    Trump is not only inciting distrust in the government, he is making money off the fury he is encouraging. A hell of a grift!

  140. 140.

    Jeffro

    @MattF: true very-short story: I did not know how to pronounce ‘emeritus’ until a couple years ago, when I mispronounced it in front of some highly educated colleagues.

    I thought it was “em-er-eye-tus” , instead of “em-air-uh-tus”

    It’s good to stay humble

  141. 141.

    WaterGirl

    @laura: I’m really sorry.  That would be simultaneously upsetting and rage-inducing. I hope he is the one sleeping on the pull-out bed since he’s the one who was reckless and irresponsible.

  143. 143.

    mali muso

    @geg6: Trying to remember what level of development my kiddo was at 18 months.  Maybe Magna Tiles?  Assuming they are large enough not to be a choking hazard.

  144. 144.

    zhena gogolia

    @geg6:

    I find that Monica & Andy have really nice (pricey) baby clothes. I really like their patterns

    ETA: Realizing that 18 months isn’t a baby per se, but I think they have stuff for that age.

  146. 146.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    If you need something for an inquiring and creative child or any age. You might like a creators crate from KiwiCo,  I got a 6 month KiwiCo.com subscription for my Great-nephew and he really enjoyed the first one in November. He’s a very smart 9 y.o. so I got him the “Tinker Crate”  for ages 9 -16.

    I’m tempted by the “Eureka” Crate for ages 14-104 for myself! They have a good BlackFriday sale still going on.

  149. 149.

    Aleta

    @debbie:   Colleen Flaherty’s response (at Inside Higher Education) to something he wrote in July 2019:

    When a misleading op-ed in The Wall Street Journal irks academics, it’s time for a fact check on faculty work and pay.

    Among other things, Epstein’s essay ignores the structural shifts that have occurred since he began teaching — most significantly the transition to majority-non-tenure-track work force. This means that many professors don’t make a salary at all, but are paid on per-course basis. (In this sense, he’s closer to his “strict hourly wage” reality than he thinks. But adjuncts say that the $3,000 they often get to teach a course vastly undervalues the actual work they do to plan it, teach it and be available to students taking it while staying current in their fields. And that shift, in turn — along with public funding cuts — has led to a greater overall workload for tenured and tenure-track professors.)
    The essay also ignores the fact that the vast majority of even full-time professors don’t teach at “tonier” colleges and universities. And while it’s true that college costs continue to outpace inflation, professors’ salaries have stayed relatively flat.

    …

  150. 150.

    zhena gogolia

    @Jeffro:

    I think your version is just as good. It’s Latin, after all. You can pronounce it any way you want.

    ETA: I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that yours is the accepted British pronunciation!

  152. 152.

    Anotherlurker

    Epstein should save his denigrating, missogynistic criticisms for the Doctor of Divinity degree.  At least a doctorate in Education addresses real issues in the real world and seems to be refreshingly free of grifters, unlike the D Div.

  153. 153.

    Mary G

    @Aleta: Oh, yes, thank you, both the story and the birb baby made me smile. Amateur naturalists don’t always get the credit they deserve.

  155. 155.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @NotMax: The hardest words to get right are the ones you learned by reading them on your own. Even after learning the correct pronunciation, the stupid brain wants to say them the wrong way.

  157. 157.

    Miss Bianca

    @WaterGirl: I ordered mine December 4 and it still hasn’t shown up. Says due date is Dec 17. Haven’t received any notice that it’s shipped out.

  158. 158.

    frosty

    We always share lists and purchase our gifts from them, so the “Wow, that’s just what I wanted” is kind of an anticlimax. As usual in mid-December, Younger Son hasn’t given us a list yet. Mine was pretty short. I had a couple of things this year that I was saving for the list but I went and bought them myself. Sort of like Zhena Gogolia @6.

    I try to figure out at least one surprise gift for everyone. Maybe from me, maybe from Santa. Got one for Younger Son that I expect he’ll like.

  160. 160.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    OT: About 3 or 4 years ago I bought one of those no contact trashcans from Costco, after about a year it started eating batteries(I had to change the 6 AA batteries about every two weeks).  So I went back to Costco and got another one, after about a year, same behavior.  So, being that I had two of them, I decided to try an experiment, get a 9vdc adaptor and solder the thing in.  Works Great!  Now, I neither have to replace the batteries every week nor do I have to find a replacement.

  163. 163.

    Miss Bianca

    @burnspbesq: I don’t know if I can bear to look. I haven’t even picked up my fiddle since my last gig on March 14, but I haven’t been reduced to selling my instruments yet…

  164. 164.

    Citizen Alan

    @Brachiator: To me, the single most depressing thing about Shitgibbon winning is that I’m now quite certain that either McCain or Romney would have been able to beat Obama if they’d gone full on racist and galvanized the garbage humans by openly embracing birtherism.

  165. 165.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @trollhattan:  I remember when Palin poured scorn on fruit fly research as an example of a waste of time and resources by pointy headed scientists, and her being completely unchastened by her display of deplorable ignorance.

    ‘Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs’ is just more of the same. A topic some bozo decides to mock in his ignorance while being completely clueless as to why it might be important outside of his own little bubble of right wing privilege.

  166. 166.

    ixnay

    @Baud: Hey, I have never delivered a baby, but I have a DVM, and have never hesitated to call myself Doctor. (Well, if you consider puppies and kittens babies, then I guess the point could be stretched.)

  167. 167.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Weird how that works. We have a light up wreath that hangs on the front door for six weeks a year, takes two D batteries and they never go dead even though we leave the wreath lit 24 hours a day. It’s like magic.

  168. 168.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Redshift: I know what you mean.  I like giving presents, and for a long time liked getting presents, but realized a while ago I was usually disappointed after I had unwrapped it since few people seemed to have a clue what I would like unless they had asked me what I wanted. Plus if they ask you what you want, you need to keep it within a reasonable price range or look greedy or ridiculous. Plus I am old enough to buy myself what I want, plus most of it is just stuff.  If I want more stuff, I would prefer to choose it myself. Yes, my husband has pretty much given up buying me things! For the last two years, my favorite thing has been going to Goodwill and finding as many good board and picture books for the little kid in our family (he’s just about to turn three) as I can. I’ve gotten good feedback from his mother for my choices so even though I’m a stranger (he’s seen me twice in his life) I feel like a presence in his life.

  169. 169.

    Steeplejack

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    This hits a nerve. Soul Town (’60s-70s Motown/​soul/​R&B) is one of my favorite channels on SiriusXM, and sometime between the last time I was in the car and yesterday they descended into the annual quagmire that is Christmas soul music. Dunno why, but it just hits me wrong, with some exceptions. Even Christmas jazz is a better bet.

    I should just dig out my Vince Guaraldi CD and play that for the duration.

  170. 170.

    Bill Arnold

    @Brachiator:

    Trump is not only inciting distrust in the government, he is making money off the fury he is encouraging. A hell of a grift!

    Monetizing sedition.

  183. 183.

    Heidi Mom

    @mali muso: IIRC, the NY Times asked Condoleezza Rice, holder of a Ph.D. in political science, which honorific she preferred.  She chose Dr., and that’s what the paper used.  Wonder if Mr. (not Dr. ) Epstein complained about that?

  186. 186.

    Mike in NC

    My ‘Kamala Harris Action Figure’ by FCTRY arrived today and I put it under the tree along with some new cat toys. FCTRY does a whole range of 6″ figurines, including Bernie and Justice RBG.

    Movie double feature for Saturday night will be ‘Bad Mom’s Christmas’ and ‘Bad Santa (Unrated)’.

  188. 188.

    RSA

    You guys had 6 hours to solve the Climate Crisis, and you still couldn’t do it.

    Actually, I have discovered a truly remarkable solution, drawing on the work of Fermat. Unfortunately, WordPress limitations prevent me from writing out the proof in this comment.

  189. 189.

    frosty

    @WaterGirl: Bread, milk, and toilet paper. The Baltimore Trinity. And many other places, to be sure. It’s possible everyone has enough TP after stockpiling for the pandemic. Our local grocery store has two truckloads in back that they can’t unload because there’s no room.

    ETA: I bought a carload of firewood today because of the oncoming snow.

  190. 190.

    Quiltingfool

    I don’t have children, but I’m lucky in that I have several nieces and nephews (I’m an only child, but my husband has siblings who all had lots of kids!).  When they were children, we really enjoyed buying them gifts – to me, children really make Christmas special.    Anyway, they are all grown, so for several years I make a quilt and draw one the the girls’  (and my sisters-in-law) name out of a hat to get the quilt.  As there are only 4 girls left to get a quilt, I’ve got 4 quilts to put in a gift game (like Dirty Santa).  Now all my nieces have a quilt, and they like them.  So, I guess I’ll need to start making masculine quilts for all the male nephews…I’ve found that guys like quilts about as much as girls do!

  192. 192.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    “A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child.”

    So midwives are doctors now?  Funny, apparently this guy thinks acquiring a doctorate has nothing to do with studying for a degree.

  194. 194.

    dexwood

    @raven: Does she ship to New Mexico? Kidding, but they are pretty cool. I’m finishing up two hand carved wooden Santas for old customers of my work. My wife is finishing two of her clay Storytellers commissioned by the friend of a friend.

  199. 199.

    Skepticat

    @Cameron: My favorite Christmas present is being left alone, and this year I’m getting my wish.

    D’accord; me too. Being on a tiny desert island with only about half a dozen people (but lots of cats) in a foreign country is the only gift I need. (Well, I wouldn’t mind it if they could restore power.) Enjoy yours!

  200. 200.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Heidi Mom: I forgot about Dr Condi. Doesn’t trump always refer to his uncle the MIT professor as “Dr John Trump” ?
    I’m sure he doesn’t recognize Mary’s PhD

  203. 203.

    Miss Bianca

    @Viva BrisVegas: Apparently Mr Epstein doesn’t think ‘meeting students’ needs’ was anything he ever had to trouble his beautiful mind about. The kind of teacher who never even thinks to pause to ask, “was it good for you, too?”

    Hey, it was Northwestern, right? Not some, you know, junior college or anything. Surely it was ‘meeting their needs’ enough just allowing them to BE there in his august presence, damn it!

    Smug little son of a bitch.

  205. 205.

    frosty

    @Miss Bianca: I’ve only done Open Mics, but my interest in learning new songs and practicing guitar plummeted in the last couple of months. I haven’t picked it up since the end of August. It seems like the challenge of playing with a friend and in front of people was one of the drivers. Who knew?

  208. 208.

    Pete Downunder

    @ixnay: Lawyers of my generation (late Jurassic) started  receiving Juris Doctor (JD) degrees instead of Bachelor of Laws (LLB). I don’t know one who refers to him or herself as Doctor. That title is reserved for Doctor of Laws (LLD) which is similar to a PhD. Even there its use seems reserved to academia. The title doctor for PhDs seems to be related to context – used in academic settings but not otherwise. Since Jill Biden is an academic I see no problem with it.

  209. 209.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @RSA:

    Actually, I have discovered a truly remarkable solution, drawing on the work of Fermat. Unfortunately, WordPress limitations prevent me from writing out the proof in this comment.

    Hahaha! Well done!

  212. 212.

    Quiltingfool

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):   I’m with you – my husband has a difficult time buying me gifts because I’m not really into jewelry, and things I really like are quilting stuff and fabric (and I have LOTS of fabric).  Now he is really easy to buy for — is it a power tool?  He’ll love it!  One year I bought him a DeWalt chop saw.  I wrapped it (not easy) and had it sitting on the washing machine Christmas morning.   He tore a section of the paper off, saw the distinctive yellow DeWalt box, and  reverently sighed, “DeWalt.”  Best.Christmas.Ever.

  214. 214.

    Brachiator

    @Citizen Alan:

    To me, the single most depressing thing about Shitgibbon winning is that I’m now quite certain that either McCain or Romney would have been able to beat Obama if they’d gone full on racist and galvanized the garbage humans by openly embracing birtherism.

    Fortunately, it turned out that in this both McCain and Romney were far more honorable than Trump could ever hope to be.

    And Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden both won the popular vote. Perhaps this emphasizes that with respect to some political issues in America, the decent still outnumber the indecent.

    Gotta find some hope in that.

  217. 217.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Trump killed Charley Pride Saturday. My folks were country fans in the late ’60s and early ’70s before they went full-metal IFB so my favorite music has always been classic country. And we had all the 8 tracks too. Everyone should be so lucky to live to 86 but that doesn’t detract from the total needlessness of all this death. I reckon Charley Pride finally got to kiss an angel.

  218. 218.

    Steeplejack

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    I remember that as a young, precocious reader I thought misled was pronounced “my-suled” and that I had just never happened to run across the present-tense misle.

  219. 219.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WaterGirl:

    Yeah, I got the email confirmation but nothing since then. No worries, I’m in no hurry and in any case wasn’t expecting it until Wednesday 12/18 (estimated delivery date when I ordered).

  220. 220.

    Another Scott

    @SiubhanDuinne: Ordered mine on 12/5, I received them yesterday (12/11).

    I’m in NoVA.

    It was sent via “USPS Innovations” or something – probably just a tiny bit faster than mule train.

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  221. 221.

    Rob

    @frosty:  Yep. Down here just outside of DC we may (or may not) get a foot of snow on Wednesday. I’m going to do my weekly Wednesday shopping on Tuesday and make sure we have bread equivalents, (oat) milk, and toilet paper in case we can’t make it to the store until Friday or Saturday.

  222. 222.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Steeplejack: I misread “dilemma” in a childhood book as “dilemna” or perhaps it was a misprint. At any rate, I spent most of my childhood over-pronouncing it as di-lem-nah to let folks know I knew how it was actually spelled and there was no reason for the “n” to be silent (as everyone else was pronouncing it di-lemma.) Imagine my surprise and horror when I found out it was actually dilemma with two m’s. And that anecdote is probably my personality in a nutshell.

  225. 225.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WaterGirl:

    Dont know why my first response went *poof* — but *poof* it went!

    Got the email last Sunday saying calendars had shipped. I wasn’t even expecting them until the 16th (original estimated delivery date), and am in no hurry anyhow, so no worries.

  230. 230.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    I once heard a (supposedly true) story of a teacher who corrected one of her students as he read aloud to the class. Something about mountain climbing.

    The boy had never seen the word “precipice,” and pronounced it press-uh-pee.

    “No, no,” said the teacher. “It’s piss, not pee.”

  232. 232.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Steeplejack: Wow. Never thought to google that. I’m amazed and intrigued. I was certainly reading books from the early 20th century. Whatever the folks found at yard sales.

  235. 235.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Starfish:

    I’m sure it does! But I suspect it was always there (maybe better-disguised) and 30-35 years ago I simply wasn’t as aware of it as I should have been.

  242. 242.

    WaterGirl

    @Amir Khalid: I am waiting for Trump to say they reneged on the deal that he would get them on the court and they were supposed to rule in his favor – out loud and publicly in some way.

    That way maybe the justices can be impeached for corruption.

  243. 243.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia:

    I don’t think they would have beaten Obama.

    Probably not. But hell, McCain might have had a better chance at winning had he chose someone other than Palin to be his running mate.  There are all kinds of hypothetical games we can play on past elections.

  244. 244.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Steeplejack: Something else I learned that was not mainstream (like “dilemna”) was the vowels of the alphabet. We were taught, “A E I O U and sometimes Y & W”. Turns out there a couple of Welsh words in American English that use “w” as a vowel but I’ve never met anyone else who was taught that in first grade. City public school.

  247. 247.

    TS (the original)

    @RSA:  Bit late to be trying to buy votes  – is he going to have his military parade in the midst of winter & wants everyone to come?

  249. 249.

    Suzanne

    Other than my immediates (kids, husband, mom), the rule is: consumable, handmade, or a book.

    This year, not doing much for husband or mom. We just purged tons of stuff when we moved. In the spirit of meeting needs, I got them both some cold-weather gear. Mr. Suzanne and I just bought a new washer and dryer, so that’s fine. Today is our wedding anniversary. I got him a game called Dialect, which is a RPG about language. He got me a cocktail subscription. Both gifts are to share.

    Spawns Elder and Younger also have December birthdays. Elder is getting gift cards to buy clothes and art supplies, as well as some fancy pens and skincare stuff. Younger is getting winter clothes and a couple of toys. Christmas will be a few more things, but really I want to take them on a trip when it is once again safe to travel. Spawn the Youngest is getting Magnatiles and those giant foam blocks.

    I dreamed about traveling last night.

  250. 250.

    divF

    As usual, being on the Left Coast, I am Late To The Thread, but the whole Dr. Jill thing is based on work practices that no one has yet brought up (either here or at LGM, which is devoting an entire OP to this).

    (1) In schools that have a mixture of Ph.D. and non-Ph.D. teaching staff, it has long been the custom for the students to address Ph.D. staff  as “Dr.”.* Since Dr. Biden has taught in two-year institutions for much of her career, this usage is not surprising.

    (2) It is difficult to get students to break that custom for one teacher. So to soften this custom, Dr. Biden has probably encouraged her students, particularly ones she works with closely, to address her as Dr. Jill. This practice sometimes happens in the medical profession. Madame Dr. divF is not nearly so alive to status distinctions as many of her colleagues. On the other hand, nurses, especially foreign-trained ones, find it hard not to use the honorific. So she has encouraged them to use “Dr. <firstname>” as a compromise.**

    * The practice has deep roots. According to a colleague who got his Ph.D in 1938, not everyone on the faculty at Berkeley at that time had  a Ph.D.. Those that did insisted on being addressed as Dr., rather than Professor. Nowadays, Professor is considered the more distinguished title.

    ** Patients in Madame’s geriatric practice were all over the map. Elderly ladies (far side of 80) would often address her as “dear”, particularly if their memories were a little shaky. However, Madame had a firm rule of addressing them all as Mr / Mrs. / Ms. <lastname>

  252. 252.

    dnfree

    @Steeplejack: I read once about someone who pronounced “misled” as “mizzled” after reading it in a book. It actually captures the meaning of the word better. “He MIZZLED me!”

  253. 253.

    Steeplejack

    Speaking of mispronunciation, I recently did a New York Times crossword by Merl Reagle, “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” where the “hook” is ordinary words “imagined as Greek gods through the magic of repronunciation.” Hilarious.

    Greek god of bondage? Manacles. Greek god of equal opportunity? Antibias.

    Completed puzzle discussed here. Yes, spoilers! For those who have a crossword subscription, the (blank) puzzle is on September 3, 2015.

  254. 254.

    debbie

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I didn’t mispronounce so much as only partially remember a word. Vowels were very interchangeable in my brain. In tenth grade, as practice for the PSAT, the teacher quickly shouted out definitions. We were supposed to shout out the word just as quickly. You can assume her reaction when I used the wrong vowel shouting out “cant”!

  257. 257.

    Steeplejack

    @Mary G:

    D’oh! Sorry, didn’t see that. I was just going through my orders from the last two years to refresh my memory. My nephew loved the Totoro, and the Gund ones are really good quality. Worth waiting for, IMO.

  259. 259.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    As a child, I came across the word Beefeater (no, not on a gin bottle! In a book!)  I mentally pronounced it be-FEET-er, and concocted an entire story in my head about its origins. Hundreds of years ago, England was invaded by swarms of deadly bees. The brave Yeomen of the Guard fought off the apian hordes. They defeated them. They were bee-defeaters. Hence, be-FEET-ers.

    As it’s not a word that comes up often in normal conversation, I was well into my teens when I found out both my pronunciation error and the actual origin of the soubriquet. Fortunately for me, it wasn’t in public, just the family. My mother thought it was very funny and told the anecdote to everyone she knew.

  260. 260.

    TS (the original)

    @Quiltingfool:

    to me, children really make Christmas special.

    And also to me.  Showing my age, I am reminded of Irma Bombeck

    There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

  261. 261.

    There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)

    Well, the fucking plague fucking killed Charley Pride today. And now I am a young boy, riding shotgun with my eldest brother Donald in what I seem to recall as a Dodge Charger, and the 8-track is going, and Charley Pride is advising me to kiss an angel good morning, and makes me think I might be able to actually do that someday. Turns out he was right. So, thanks, Charley. Thank you, brother. Goddamnit.

  264. 264.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    Great idea about gift ideas! That vacuum/​blower looks cool. I have been wanting something like that, and it’s always good to get a recommendation instead of flying blind.

    It’s not small enough to be a stocking stuffer, but this little battery-powered lamp is pretty cool. Under 20 bucks, recharges via USB, lots of color options and even a remote control. I got one for myself and then a couple for the Sighthound Hall mob to use out on the patio after dark.

  265. 265.

    Viva BrisVegas

    Everybody knows that the only real doctors are Doctors of Divinity (Divinitatis Doctor, D.D.).

    All the others are just johnny-come-latelies. I blame the Enlightenment for the drop in standards.

  266. 266.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack:

    Speaking of mispronunciation, I recently did a New York Times crossword by Merl Reagle, “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” where the “hook” is ordinary words “imagined as Greek gods through the magic of repronunciation.” Hilarious.

    This is funny stuff.  Loved “Greek god of tangy drinks,” Limeades.

  267. 267.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WaterGirl:

    This happens occasionally. I’ll send a comment, there it isn’t, I scroll up to look for it, no glimmer. Sometimes I shrug and say the hell with it, and sometimes I write a fresh comment. And then the first one appears :-)

  271. 271.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Steeplejack:  Pretty cool and a great title, too. As teenagers, me and a buddy bought movie tickets to Spring Fever, thinking it was one of those risqué teen flicks with lots of tits. Turns out it was a tennis movie with Susan Anton. So we slipped out of the theater and went into another theater. And the movie being shown there was The Gods Must Be Crazy. And we sat there completely and totally blown away.

  272. 272.

    unique uid

    @frosty: thanks!

    I’ll try it !

    Damn, I really wanted that yesterday for a witty reply.  First potential witty reply in months since coming here.

    And I have a Comp Sci degree and 40 years in IT.  Quote = block quote = graphic square, huh.  Never would have guessed.

  275. 275.

    Another Scott

    @trollhattan:

    I give it 50/50 that @WSJ gives Joseph Epstein a follow-up column to talk about the reaction to this called “Intolerance, Sensitivity, and America’s Ladies.”

    — NoWisdomNoCourageHat (@Popehat) December 12, 2020

    OMG I just read Joseph Epstein’s 2010 piece and it’s just a huge overwritten petulant yawp about how people like him are victimized by political correctness

    — NoWisdomNoCourageHat (@Popehat) December 12, 2020

    Odds that Popehat is really surprised??!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  276. 276.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Redshift: Dang! I came up with a solution for the climate crisis, but it didn’t fit on this cocktail napkin it was too late for the dead thread.

    Since I’m a math geek, I came up with a marvelous solution, but it wouldn’t fit in the margin of this book I’m reading.

  279. 279.

    Mary G

    Charlotte Clymer has designed a T-shirt with

    “That’s Dr. Biden to you, Sir.”

    printed on it. All proceeds go to the NOVA Community College Education Foundation in honor of Dr. Biden. Price $19.99, goal 50, 550 bought so far.

  280. 280.

    J R in WV

    @WaterGirl:

    Speaking of General Flynn, can’t he military take his rank away from him and make him a peon again?

    General (ret) Flynn is currently a peon, and no one can raise him above that station!

  281. 281.

    RSA

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’ve heard and committed a variety of mispronunciations: for example, “Chelsea”, on which my mom corrected me; “exemplar”, on which a professor corrected me in class when I was a grad student. Embarrassment never fades away entirely, for me. :-)

    A word that I’ve never mispronounced in public, but one that to this day screws up my internal voice when reading, is “beribboned”. “Berry” + “boned”, right?

  283. 283.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @debbie:

    Vowels were very interchangeable in my brain.

    I was that way with numbers. Took me years to use 7 and 9 without having to stop and think which was which.

  284. 284.

    Doc Sardonic

    @marklar: For the best info on snow, if you know a utility worker ask them. A number of years ago my wife and I took a vacation between car races and went to Boone, NC. All the up the radio was telling us that the Boone, Banner Elk and Bristol,TN we’re going to get a dusting of snow overnight. We got into Boone early evening and decided to go to the grocery store to get stuff for breakfast and lunch then go back and stock for the week the next day. When we got to the checkout the young lady running the register looked at our cart and said ya’ll must be from out of town, it’s going to snow tonight. We said we had been hearing on the radio on the drive it was going to be a light dusting, she said no it’s going to snow not dust, my husband works for the power company and he just called to say he was going in to work and he would see me Tuesday so ya’ll need to get some more stuff. It snowed 3 feet that night.

  285. 285.

    The Moar You Know

     “A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child.”

    My last academic class in anything was twenty years ago, my degree thirty, and I know what happens if you refer to the professor as anything but “Doctor” unless you explicitly are told you can.  It’s not fun.

  287. 287.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @SiubhanDuinne: When I was a teenager, I’d go to the library and read the political magazines. Ya know, the ones with the caricatures of political figures on the covers. I started out interested in them because I drew, mostly caricatures. But I started reading the articles and that’s how I learned the word “detente”. About a year ago, I was in my boss’ office and I used “detente” in a sentence, knowing full well how it’s pronounced NOW but my teenaged mind jumped in at the last moment and pronounced it “de-ten-tay” and my boss laughed at me scornfully and corrected me. That was pretty embarassing.

  289. 289.

    If a Tree Falls

    When I was in fourth grade, I mispronounced the country of Niger during Social Studies class. I thought it was a situation like dam/damn, where the word is okay to say if it’s used in the right context.

  291. 291.

    lowtechcyclist

    A decade or so ago, all of us grownups in my extended family agreed that it was just getting too hard to buy presents for each other, and we all agreed that we’d just do presents for the (underage) kids from then on.

    It’s made Christmas prep way less stressful, especially now that my generation’s entering the age bracket where we look around and think, “how much of this crap can I get rid of?”  The last thing any of us want is well-intentioned gifts that would gather dust for a couple of years before we finally gave them away.

  293. 293.

    Steeplejack

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    I can’t remember the name of it now, but there was an “art cinema” in Atlanta—one of the few places where you could see indie and foreign films in the dark days before on-line streaming (and even DVDs—eek!)—that ran The Gods Must Be Crazy for over a year. I remember pleading with the owner to at least alternate it with the other new stuff that was coming out, but he said he was making too much money. Fortunately there was another art house that sort of picked up the slack.

  294. 294.

    Amir Khalid

    @dnfree:

    I was always confused by awry, myself. When I come across the word, sometimes the voice in my head still wants to read it as awe ree.

  295. 295.

    lowtechcyclist

    @RSA: A word that I’ve never mispronounced in public, but one that to this day screws up my internal voice when reading, is “beribboned”. “Berry” + “boned”, right?

    That’s exactly how my brain made sense of it too!  Took me at least a decade, probably closer to two, to figure out the correct pronunciation.  And I’m generally pretty good with that sort of thing.

  299. 299.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: 
    I’m reading P. D. James, The Black Tower, out loud to my husband while he cooks. I’ve learned a bunch of new words. She’s worse than Nabokov. In one paragraph there were rock samphire, umbels, and antirrhinum.

  307. 307.

    Another Scott

    @If a Tree Falls: My dad visited one summer so we could go to the Smithsonian museums in DC.  At the National Gallery we saw one of the overwhelming Titians they have.

    Hilarity almost ensued…  ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  309. 309.

    MagdaInBlack

    I don’t recall the exact H.S test question, but the answer was ; Emperor Maximilian. My friend wrote out ” Emperor Max the Million.”  Teacher gave him credit for it =-)

  310. 310.

    Steeplejack

    This thread is making me anxious! There is so much I want to respond to, and I feel like I can’t read fast enough. It’s like an explosion of good material after the run of downer threads and couple of posting droughts we’ve had this week.

  312. 312.

    unique uid

    @Jeffro:

    true very-short story: I did not know how to pronounce ‘emeritus’ until a couple years ago, when I mispronounced it in front of some highly educated colleagues.

    I worked on a Big 10 campus for forty years, just two months back I had an email from a professor that he was retiring.  I almost called him “Emeriti”, thinking that was singular for emeritus.  Ended up spending several minutes with Google while composing the reply (something didn’t seem quite right).  Two months later, don’t recall details, but pretty sure Emeriti is female version.  Maybe dodged that bullet; trying to be humble.

  316. 316.

    Blue Galangal

    Me either, Water Girl. I’m reduced to Mother Earth News for my sister and Korean / Japanese moisturizers for my out of town friends.

  319. 319.

    Steeplejack

    @raven:

    Yes! And the one that picked up the slack was in a little strip mall up by Piedmont Road and Lindbergh Drive.

    I think the Silver Screen at Peachtree Palisades had closed by then. That was the go-to when I moved to Atlanta in ’79.

  321. 321.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @zhena gogolia: I love PD James. Bummed me out when I knew there would be no more Dalgliesh books. Thank god Ian Rankin can’t seem to let go of Rebus, and Big Ger Cafferty.

  324. 324.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Re: pronunciations. Two that I embarrassed myself on in public were “infrared” (past tense of “infrare”, right?) and “fiery”.

    The latter took me until I was married and reading to my wife, when she informed me it’s “fire + ee” and not “fear + ee”. Oh, and in the same context, I’d always said “ceased” the same as “seized”. Nobody ever told me it was a soft S, till my bride gently corrected me.

  327. 327.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @unique uid: Two months later, don’t recall details, but pretty sure Emeriti is female version.

    Nah. “Emeriti” is plural. Professor Emeritus, Professors Emeriti.

    If there were a female version, it would be “Emerita”, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen that form. Just “Emeritus” for everybody.

    Edit: Today (just now) I have learned that “emerita” and the feminine plural “emeritae” are indeed used by some people, but the rules for usage are somewhat confused and inconsistent.

  329. 329.

    Just Chuck

    @Viva BrisVegas: I believe she also pooh-poohed “volcano monitoring”.  After which there were not just one but two major volcanic eruptions that threw up enough ash to threaten air travel.

  331. 331.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Peachatter

    Christ only knows what autocorrect was thinking when it changed Peachtree to this strange not-a-word.

    Especially because I had Peachtree in a comment just minutes earlier with no problem.

  335. 335.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: it’s tough!

    I was talking with a co-worker this week and his wife continues to think that Pearl Jam is singing about how they “can’t find…the buttermilk…” (Betterman)

    I think she’s just kidding him but who knows?

  339. 339.

    Steeplejack

    @raven:

    That’s the guy! I had forgotten his name. He wasn’t at the Garden Hills all the time, but he was there often enough that I would occasionally talk to him about movies. I was in an informal “Movie Night” group (2-15 people, depending) that went to see an indie or foreign movie every Wednesday night, either there or at the Screening Room, the Plaza or (early days) the Rhodes (thank you, @SiubhanDuinne). I think he noticed us because sometimes we’d be the only people in the theater.

    It’s amazing how much good stuff you see when you commit to watch 40-50 movies a year. You see a lot of crap, but the good stuff is really memorable. Plus (back then) you’re seeing it before all the hype and sometimes even before many reviews. One that sticks out off the top of my head is Kar-Wai Wong’s In the Mood for Love. Ooh, also Edward Yang’s Yi-Yi. Damn, 2000 was a good year.

  340. 340.

    Jeffro

    @Just Some Fuckhead:It feels ridiculous at this point in the pandemic that we went through all that effort back in March and April.

    truth

    And with about 10-20% more effort, plus a leader who wasn’t worried about masks smearing his orange pancake makeup, we’d have had a decent summer, and be able to contact trace this fall, and…

    …grrrrrrrrr….

  343. 343.

    Frosty Fred

    “Missled” for misled, me.

    I studied Hamlet in high school and again in college and I’m still not sure how to pronounce “mobled” nor yet what state the unfortunate queen was in to earn that adjective. (I just searched and the meaning is still ambiguous; it might be a variant of “muffled”–she was described as wrapped in a blanket–or it might be a legal term referring to change of ownership. Still, that’s ahead of mob-led, which was my initial reading–led away by the mob.)

  347. 347.

    raven

    @Steeplejack: The UGA theater had great films back in the day. Raise the Red Lantern, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?, The Madness of King George. Then they went mainstream. I remember taking a woman who I barely knew to the Garden Hills to see Polanski’s “Bitter Moon”. This is NOT a film you want to take someone you know well to, someone you barely know. . . let’s just say we didn’t talk about it much after.

  349. 349.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    No, Times archives. As I have written to you several times in the past, but apparently too late in the threads, one of my Trump coping strategies the last year or so has been to work through the Times puzzles chronologically from 1993. I am up to September 2015, and for a while I thought I was going to catch up to the present day before he was out of office. Some bad days I did a whole month of puzzles. ?

  350. 350.

    scav

    Foreign languages can lead to some classics.  Had a fellow exchange student in France get about halfway through a WWII history class before she cottoned onto who this Adelphi Clair guy was.

  352. 352.

    Pete Downunder

    Going back to titles for a moment. In the US I was always annoyed when seeing a medical doctor they would say “Hi Pete, I’m Doctor Feelgood”. It should have been either “HI Pete I’m Fred, or Hi Mr Downunder I’m Dr Feelgood.” In the land down under everybody is on a first name basis – or often a nickname. Mrs Downunder had to go to the little country ER one night and the on-call doc arrived wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a big beard and introduced himself as Ian. I never did learn his surname. He did a fine job.

  353. 353.

    Jeffro

    @frosty: …and 200k+ of our fellow citizens would be alive…

    I’m not sure that him doing the absolute minimum would have saved trumpov’s re-election – the battle lines were pretty well drawn years ago – and I don’t really care.  I’d rather we had saved all those folks and have saved all those jobs and not had to embarrass ourselves in front of the whole world for 6+ months.

    No point in rehashing it, he wasn’t capable of doing the minimum, and now he’s on his way out.

  354. 354.

    unique uid

    @sab:

    Watergirl gave us all kinds of imstructions when she redesigned the site. I should go back and look.

    I’m happy because frosty just taught me how to block quote!

    The quickie guide for clickable links:

    1. Copy the URL(link).
    2. Test the URL (open a new private browser window, paste the link in and make sure it works).
    3. Optional: fix up the URL to remove crap at the end. ECommerce sites frequently add a bunch of junk to the URL — actually don’t bother with this, too hard to explain.
    4. In the Balloon Juice reply, in the icons at the top, next to the double quotes, there is something that looks like a chain. Choose that and paste the URL into the field that opens up.

    Chain = links = URL

    I would say ***, but I can never remember how to spell it.  Hope this helps, if too much information for a Saturday night just ignore me.

    Actually the whole thread is leaving me feel inadequate.  Pronunciation and vocabulary, arghh!

  360. 360.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Jeffro: Even Brad Parscale said (or cried) that had Trump shown the tiniest bit of concern for all the dead and dying, he’d have won. I don’t actually care to dissect the truth of this because I cannot imagine living in a world where seven million MORE people looked at the last disastrous four years and thought, yeah I want more of that shit. I’m cool with imagining it was voter fraud/priming the machines, etc. I only bring it up to point out that even his own people thought he was a sociopath.

  361. 361.

    Jeffro

    @unique uid: staying humble is the way to go.

    It’s funny…to balance out the ’emeritus’ screw-up, I managed to throw in an entirely appropriate use of ‘fortuitous’ while volunteering this week and a colleague there looked at me like, “whoa”.

    “Benefits…of a classical education” – Hans Gruber ;)

  363. 363.

    Lyrebird

    @Percysowner: I’ve been giving books and dvds to the grownups on my list.  I’m having the opposite problem to most of y’all, though, what with having to do most of my household shopping online currently, I see so many things the little ones need.  Used to want to avoid over-emphasizing gifts on this holiday, oh well.

    I’ll give a shout out to greater good dot org, fwiw, if people want to give in honor of relatives.  There are probably better organizations (Heifer Project, etc), but at Greater Good you can cover lots of different interests with just one trip and one checkout basket: help educate kids in Haiti or Syria, feed shelter pets, fund ocean cleanup, and serve veterans meals…

  364. 364.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Pete Downunder: It can be tough to communicate easily to complete strangers how incredibly intelligent and accomplished one is. “Doctor” is a convenient shortcut. For myself, I’m reduced to bringing up the weather and translating that to my IQ. For instance, I’ll say something like, “Wow, it feels like 152 degrees out here today, which coincidentally is the same as my IQ” or “What time is it? I have a MENSA meeting to go to.”

  365. 365.

    Another Scott

    @Richard: When my best friend’s kids were small, he came up with a fake curse word for them.

    “He’s a buckethead!!”

    I never figured out whether that was genius, or cruel considering how others might react the first time they heard it from them…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  366. 366.

    Steeplejack

    @raven:

    Okay, refresh me on where Garden Hills is/was. If it was in the Peachtree Palisades strip mall on Peachtree, then that was the version 2.0 of the Silver Screen.

    Great Mexican restaurant in there called Jalisco, by the way.

    The “spiritual” shop I remember was in a little strip behind Ansley Mall—The Sphinx. Always smelled great and had tons of great books.

  368. 368.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack:

    It’s amazing how much good stuff you see when you commit to watch 40-50 movies a year. You see a lot of crap, but the good stuff is really memorable.

    Oh yeah. I did not have a TV in my dorm rooms in college, and did not own a TV for some years afterwards. But I tanked up on movies shown by the college film societies and by the great art house cinemas in New York and Los Angeles.

    It’s good to see the spirit of discovery still alive when folks recommend a wide range of movies found on Netflix and Amazon Prime and elsewhere.

  370. 370.

    raven

    @Steeplejack: Garden Hill was on Peachtree right up the hill from Peachtree Battle. It had a Fellini’s Pizza and a La Fonda eatery two doors down and a cool record store next door.

  372. 372.

    Jeffro

     

    @Just Some Fuckhead: yup

    I’m not sure how to put it but between Kushner’s horrid mismanagement (hate to even call it that) of the pandemic response and McConnell’s inclination to try and make Dems in general suffer/not have government do anything effective, ever, trumpov got exactly the bad advice he wanted to hear.

    Twitter Dick Nixon said something a week or two ago about how he could have basically paid people to vote for him.  Jamelle Bouie noted something similar as well: trumpov’s turnout was good for many reasons, and one of those was that he put a decent-sized check in many Americans’ pockets earlier this year as the Dems stood feebly by and let him take credit for it.

    Total own goal that – oops! – cost a couple hundred thousand Americans their lives and has left us heading into worse, 9-10 months after this whole shitfest started.  Classic trumpov.

  375. 375.

    Pete Downunder

    @Just Some Fuckhead:  True. Many years ago I had a case in a small farming town in Northern California and a local lawyer had printed on his business card that he had graduated from Harvard Law School. We resisted, only barely, making fun of him because he was so sincerely proud of his accomplishment and otherwise a nice guy.

  376. 376.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack:

    You’re going north on Peachtree, hang right at the Cathedral, it’s a couple of blocks up, on the right.

    It no longer exists. No idea what’s in that space now. (I used to drive past it once or twice a week, but haven’t been in that part of Buckhead since I retired in 2013.)

  377. 377.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: 

    That’s a good one!
    There are more than a few sites devoted to this…one had

    “Don’t go Jason Waterfalls”

    and

    “Here we are now, in containers”

    for a pair of pop hits

    and now I will never be able to unhear those…

  379. 379.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack:

    I adored The Sphinx. Used to live virtually around the corner from Ansley Mall, so I went there pretty often. After they closed, I tried transferring my affections to the Phoenix and Dragon, but it just didn’t have the same vibe.

  382. 382.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Jeffro: I think there were two issues at play with the failed Covid response. The first and most important is that there’s no solutions for a pandemic in the Republican toolbox. They just fundamentally don’t think government has any role. Tax cuts, loosening gun laws or allowing corps to pollute more or crawling up a woman’s vagina with a microscope ain’t gonna help a bit.

    The second is Trump is incapable of empathizing with anyone other than himself. He’s damaged. In this case, his psychoses dovetailed nicely with Republican party ideology.

  383. 383.

    Steeplejack

    @raven:

    Yeah, I looked up the address for the Garden Hills on Google Maps, and the street view brought it back to me like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. We used to eat at La Fonda a lot for our “what the fuck did we just see?!” debriefings.

  388. 388.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Just Some Fuckhead: The thing I noticed from the beginning is that conservatives and libertarians immediately seemed drawn to “solutions” that involved intentionally giving people the disease. I recall a bunch were talking about intentionally infecting huge numbers of under-40 people so they would be immune. So they naturally settled on “herd immunity” approaches early on.

    I think it’s an aesthetic preference–they think of approaches that involve sacrificing a lot of people or deliberately riding out illness as morally “tough” and therefore most likely correct.

    I just said this on Twitter and someone followed up saying I have a “twisted world view”. It was a guy who was pushing lifting COVID restrictions on whole classes of people. Enough said.

  393. 393.

    Steeplejack

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I left Atlanta in 2005 and have been back only once, for a visit in 2012 that was mostly on the back side of Stone Mountain—Snellville and Centerville. Did do a couple of excursions into town to eat at a couple of old favorite haunts. I could see so much that had changed just in those seven years, and the cumulative changes in the 40 years since I first moved there are monumental.

    When I first moved to Atlanta, I lived in a big house on Peachtree Circle, walking distance to the Rhodes Theater. Shared the house with another guy and three Eastern flight attendants. Some Georgia Tech boys in the basement apartment. Eastern Air Lines has been gone for almost 30 years now. Tempus fugit and all that.

  397. 397.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: When she was 7, my niece came home from school and asked what a “Jaguar” was, because one of the kids had called someone that.

    So jaguar became our safe curse word around her.

    edit: buckethead has a good feel for a curse word.  I think it could be satisfying to call someone a buckethead.

  399. 399.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne:

     

    It was a house on Monroe Drive just past Piedmont that had all these zany kids things, lights and the kind of stuff my wife loved! Check the Archival Gallery.

    Whimble Designs was incorporated in 1997. While the enterprise began as a retail gallery and studio, Martha describes her business today as an intellectual property based on narrative, supported by flat and dimensional artwork, fantasy at the core.

    Its centerpiece is a four volume fully illustrated fairytale for children and adults entitled “The Legend of The Land of Caelumen.” This mythology has evolved to present day with the publishing of “The Chronicles,” a series of six 32 page storybook adventures that unfold here on Earth in a most magical environment called Penstemon Farm.

    Martha lives with her husband and three pets in Midtown Atlanta. The Whimbles, their Friends, and Companions are very alive in her playful environment. She invites you to meet them, to follow their stories, and, most importantly, to love them. Hopefully, they will become as real to you as they are to her.

  402. 402.

    frosty

    @Steeplejack: “what the fuck did we just see?!”

    That was Eraserhead for me. Buddy of mine and I thought we were going to see something campy and funny like John Waters. Nope! I think your quote is exactly what we said to each other over a couple of beers after the flick.

  403. 403.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack:

    I first moved to Atlanta in 1962, and stayed here until late ‘65. Then I was gone for almost two decades. When I moved back in 1984, I scarcely recognised the skyline, nor most of the old familiar landmarks. I still feel that way on the rare occasions I venture down Peachtree Road from the northern suburbs.

    In the early ‘60s there was a local improv group* based in Midtown whose signature song was “They’re tearing up Peachtree again, again.” And it’s still true. There’s always someplace where they’re digging up a major intersection, or demolishing a familiar building, or constructing a new mall or apartment complex or something.

    *ETA: I believe they were called the Wits’ End Players?? Memory is foggy on this. But I remember the song!

  404. 404.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin:

    So they naturally settled on “herd immunity” approaches early on.

    IIRC (and I think I do), Fox News and the rest of the RWNJ echo chamber turned up the klaxons to 11 on that about 3 hours after the first reports trickled out that POC and the poor were disproportionally affected by COVID-19.

    Coincidentally, I’m sure.

    Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  406. 406.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    I don’t know if he did, or how often. This is the headnote on the Greek one: “In honor of the late, beloved crossword constructor Merl Reagle, today we present a classic puzzle of his from the 1999 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.”

    Okay, Wikipedia says he sold a puzzle to the Times when he was 16—the youngest ever at the time (1966).

    And that 2015 puzzle is bittersweet, because it was published 12 days after Reagle died.

    ETA: If you don’t do the Times puzzles, you really should read that article I linked above, because the “Greek” words are all very funny.

  409. 409.

    zhena gogolia

    @Steeplejack:

    I vaguely remember doing that one when it first appeared.

    The WaPo publishes one of his puzzles every Sunday and I always do them. He was a very engaging constructor.

  410. 410.

    Brachiator

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    I think there were two issues at play with the failed Covid response. The first and most important is that there’s no solutions for a pandemic in the Republican toolbox.

    I think you are definitely onto something here. You can’t shoot the virus or pray it away, and you can’t say that only liberal sinners get infected.

    And worse, their belief that government should not have any role has degenerated into suicidal defiance of health experts’ recommendations.

    The second is Trump is incapable of empathizing with anyone other than himself. He’s damaged. In this case, his psychoses dovetailed nicely with Republican party ideology.

    Trump seems to have some strange hangup about illness and death. And yeah, a lack of empathy. But something more. Trump sees people who are weak or who need help as un-deserving. When the pandemic hit, he showed everyone that he did not believe that he had a duty to help protect the American people, especially if there was nothing for him in it.

  415. 415.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The thing I noticed from the beginning is that conservatives and libertarians immediately seemed drawn to “solutions” that involved intentionally giving people the disease. I recall a bunch were talking about intentionally infecting huge numbers of under-40 people so they would be immune. So they naturally settled on “herd immunity” approaches early on.

    To be fair, these people were willing to expose themselves to the virus as well. There was a strange fallback to the irrational fantasy that a superior person with good breeding and a superior immune system could outfight the CoronaVirus. This is why you saw UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson originally embrace the idea of herd immunity and put himself in a position where he might be deliberately exposed to the virus.

    And this did not work out well for him at all.

    I think it’s an aesthetic preference–they think of approaches that involve sacrificing a lot of people or deliberately riding out illness as morally “tough” and therefore most likely correct.

    These conservative and libertarian virus fighters would either ignore or minimize the numbers of people who might die from the virus while any supposed herd immunity would be accruing. And I would see advocates of this nonsense also talk about how Americans had an irrational fear of death.  They would mock people who stayed home as somehow “hiding” from the pandemic.

    In the end these people came across as a sick parody of something out of an Ayn Rand novel (which is already a kind of sick parody).

  416. 416.

    Steeplejack

    @Brachiator:

    I was in college ’69-72, before even videocassettes, and if you wanted to see classic movies or foreign films you really had to do some planning. It wasn’t just “Oh, cool, I think I’ll watch that tonight.” You had to monitor the different venues—student union, various film societies, international students’ groups, etc.—figure out what they were showing when, and then you showed up on their schedule, damn it. If you missed a movie, it might be a year or two before you got another chance.

    I was seeing five or six movies a week all through college. I just found out a couple of years ago from my old friend in Las Vegas, who was my girlfriend in college, that she almost flunked out because of all the movies we were seeing. I had no idea!

  417. 417.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Brachiator: And many of these leaders who had that kind of attitude and exposed themselves to Covid got the best healthcare treatment available – and certainly not available to the little people who were left to die in the hallways of hospitals. So that’s a pretty decent gig when you can challenge fate all manly-like and then get bailed out on the other side by money and science.

  418. 418.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    It’s weird that certain shows have disappeared. I always assume it’s some trivial but vicious stalement over “distribution rights.”

    As I suffer sleeplessly through night after night of “Quinn Martin Theater” (Mannix, Cannon, Barbaby Jones on the Folk network) I pine for Harry O with David Janssen. Loved it back in the day, would love to see how that holds up.

  419. 419.

    Jeffro

    @Just Some Fuckhead: yup

    Variations on those themes:

    • trumpov didn’t want to spook the stock market, despite the fact that the pandemic would eventually um pan- itself (couldn’t be hidden)
    • Kushner’s incompetence/malevolence towards the blue cities and states (again, as if the pandemic wasn’t going to be pan- )
    • magical thinking: “this will all be over by summer…it’s just like the flu…they’re just trying to damage my re-election”
    • trumpov’s endless doubling down (it’s like he couldn’t change course as of February(!) no matter what the data told him)

    And on and on.  A perfect storm of incompetence, malice, narcissism, greed, revenge, etc.

  420. 420.

    Jeffro

    @Matt McIrvin:The thing I noticed from the beginning is that conservatives and libertarians immediately seemed drawn to “solutions” that involved intentionally giving people the disease.

    I have a feeling that these would be some of my fellow scummy GenXers, the ‘Reagan babies’, for whom no government action towards the public good is possible.  (Thanks, Uncle Ron and Aunt Ayn!)  But I’m a little biased against those folks so maybe it was others…

  421. 421.

    TheflipPsyd

    @Just Some Fuckhead: I would have been in first grade in 1976 -77. I went to a.public school for half day kindergarten and remember singing that as well. That would have been 75. My brothers went to same school and learned that as well. They are five and eight years older. Grew up in Philadelphia

  422. 422.

    Brachiator

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    And many of these leaders who had that kind of attitude and exposed themselves to Covid got the best healthcare treatment available – and certainly not available to the little people who were left to die in the hallways of hospitals. So that’s a pretty decent gig when you can challenge fate all manly-like and then get bailed out on the other side by money and science.

    Again, to be fair, some of these morons believed, and still believe that their natural superiority would save them. And so they could not be sure that the best medical care would come to their rescue. Boris Johnson was put on a ventilator and there were whispers about what to do if he did not survive, because at this stage no one could guarantee that treatment regimens were always effective.

    And for the uber-rich the first line of defense is not depending on first-rate medical care,  but fleeing to some quiet place where they can comfortably isolate themselves.

    And we have seen here in the US that some of the foolish conservatives who deliberately put themselves in harm’s way to support Trump have become seriously ill, and a few, like Herman Cain, have died.

  428. 428.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jeffro: It does go further back than that.

    I’m a fan of print science fiction. One of the enduring themes of science fiction is somebody having to make a difficult moral choice in a life-and-death situation, on which the fate of worlds perhaps hinges. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of story. But since the John Campbell days there’s been this weird strain of stories (Tom Godwin’s 1954 “The Cold Equations” is the paradigmatic example) in which the setup is stacked so that the maximally brutal solution is the “correct” one.

    (In “The Cold Equations”, the space-pilot protagonist must murder a young girl stowaway by flushing her out of an airlock so he can deliver medical supplies to fight a pandemic. The setup that creates this situation involves what any sane society would consider criminal negligence on maybe half a dozen levels, but the story deemphasizes that in favor of the naive girl not understanding that sometimes the laws of physics trump common decency.)

    Long-term exposure to this kind of story does things to your head, I think.

  429. 429.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @mrmoshpotato:

    …next time you see Bill Kristol or David French wondering how we got here…

    …punch him right in the nose and say “Golly, I have no idea, you fucking asshole. Wanna ask me again?”

Comments are closed.